British petrol stations run out of fuel as motorists panic buy amid truck-driver shortage - ABC News:
Thousands of British petrol stations ran dry on Sunday (local time), as motorists scrambled to fill up amid a supply disruption due to a nationwide shortage of truck drivers.
[...] BP said nearly a third of its British petrol stations had run out of the two main grades of fuel.
"With the intense demand seen over the past two days, we estimate that around 30 per cent of sites in this network do not currently have either of the main grades of fuel," BP, which operates 1,200 sites in Britain, said in statement.
Lines of vehicles formed at petrol stations for a third day running as motorists waited, some for hours, to fill up with fuel after oil firms reported a lack of drivers was causing transport problems.
Some operators had to ration supplies and others closed petrol stations altogether.
The Petrol Retailers Association, which represents almost 5,500 independent outlets, said about two-thirds of its members were reporting that they had sold out their fuel, with the rest "partly dry and running out soon".
[...] The haulage industry says the UK is short tens of thousands of truckers, due to a perfect storm of factors including the coronavirus pandemic, an aging workforce and an exodus of foreign workers following Britain's Brexit departure from the European Union last year.
Several countries, including the United States and Germany, also are experiencing a shortage of truck drivers.
But the problem has been especially visible in Britain, where it has contributed to empty supermarket shelves and shuttered gas pumps.
[...] The government said it would issue 5,000 three-month visas for truck drivers starting in October, and another 5,500 for poultry workers.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Monday September 27 2021, @11:29AM (29 children)
Truck drivers have terrible work and pay conditions. The industry was supported for many years by cheap immigrant labour from Eastern Europe. When that dried up following Brexit, the hauliers did not rectify the terrible pay and conditions and suddenly found that no one wants their stinking job.
The proletariat have spoken.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @12:08PM (8 children)
Why blame on socialism? It's the lack of socialism why we are seeing this happening. Capitalism shot its own foot by making itself dependent on cheap eastern European labour for maximum profit and neglecting its own work force. The few truck drivers I know are/were proud of their job that they enjoy(ed), but the pressure from cheap work force from eastern Europe has been a burden for them as well. And what does the UK now? Instead of having their internal market fix it (read: increase the salary due to scarcity), they go pre-brexit for this market because they don't want to pay more for something that's apparently worth something.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @12:21PM (6 children)
Cos he's a nong that equates the EU with 'socialism'. Because apocryphally they passed a law to ban bent bananas and now they only allow straight ones.
Far from it.
Free movement of people in allowing, say, Bulgarian or Romanian truck drivers to work anywhere across western Europe is unbridled capitalism.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Opportunist on Monday September 27 2021, @12:43PM (5 children)
It was cucumbers, not bananas. It was a grading system, not a ban. It was about how stackable and thus easily transportable they are and not about quality.
But aside of that it's right.
It really reminds me of the old Soviet joke:
Is it correct that Grigori Grigorievich Grigoriev won a luxury car at the All-Union Championship in Moscow?
In principle, yes. But first of all it was not Grigori Grigorievich Grigoriev, but Vassili Vassilievich Vassiliev; second, it was not at the All-Union Championship in Moscow, but at a Collective Farm Sports Festival in Smolensk; third, it was not a car, but a bicycle; and fourth he didn't win it, but rather it was stolen from him. Aside of that, it's completely correct.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday September 27 2021, @02:00PM
Ah, Radio Yerevan jokes...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday September 27 2021, @05:43PM (2 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Informative) by Opportunist on Monday September 27 2021, @11:24PM (1 child)
Actually, there is a regulation concerning the quality classification of cucumbers [europa.eu]. That does indeed include a specification for curvature ("be reasonably well shaped and practically straight (maximum height of the arc: 10 mm per 10 cm of the length of cucumber)."), but what is usually omitted is the context. That this applies to cucumbers that are supposed to be sold under the "extra" quality class. The regulation says nothing about whether other cucumbers may be sold or at what price. As far as the regulation is concerned, all the bend of the cucumber influences is whether or not it may be labeled "extra".
This said, yes, the argument based on it is ridiculous and very obviously trying to mislead. Still, saying "that doesn't exist" isn't even doing it justice, the regulation does exist, only the argument based on it that claims the EU bureaucracy is overbearing is simply and plainly deliberately misleading.
And that should be pointed out instead of just swept aside.
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Tuesday September 28 2021, @09:27AM
the argument based on it that claims the EU bureaucracy is overbearing is simply and plainly deliberately misleading.
And was originally made by Boris Johnson (current prime minister) when he worked as a journalist at the Daily Telegraph, before
he was sacked for lying.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday September 27 2021, @06:06PM
Don't forget eurosausages...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzeDZtx3wUw [youtube.com] (Yes Minister)
(Score: 4, Touché) by PiMuNu on Monday September 27 2021, @01:21PM
> Why blame on socialism?
It was a joke.
"Political correctness gone mad".
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @12:55PM (1 child)
Brexit was already causing shortages. Covid just made it worse. It's the same with all the restaurants crying that they can't find staff - people have retrained and moved on to better jobs: better pay, more regular hours, less obnoxious customers and bosses, less risk of exposure to some antivaxxer antimasker plague rat getting into your face because they aren't being allowed in if they aren't vaccinated …
It's hardly socialism - workers are using the same principles of supply abd demand that businesses used against them for so long to suppress wages and benefits. So pay up or go out of business. That you don't want to pay more isn't the workers problem.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday September 27 2021, @01:30PM
Bonus: they themselves could act as obnoxious customers. That is... as long as there's somebody who can sell them something. Which seems to not be the case any longer. Oh, well...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Interesting) by zocalo on Monday September 27 2021, @12:59PM (13 children)
The blame game has started, and there's a lot of quibbling going on over apportioning the root cause(s) as you might expect, but that the whole supply chain has been creaking at the seams has been apparent for several weeks if you've been paying attention, and especially so over the last few weeks. Yes, there are the occassional quite obvious gaps on the supermarket shelf, but it's also manifest in more subtle ways through limited choice; this week you might not be able to get your preferred type of butter, the week before something was only available in 1L bottles, and so on, but they're usually back on the shelves the week after. Hard to pin down when I first noticed this, but I can easily believe it's been going on since the July dates being thrown around.
You clearly don't need to panic buy anything in bulk, but I'd say it's definitely getting prudent to make sure you add any essentials to the shopping list before you run them down below two week's supply unless you're prepared to go for an alternative product/size if necessary. As we've seen from TP last year, and now fuel, once the needless panic starts - and it will - it can take weeks before things fully recover though. That's a potential critical vulnerability right there for a hostile state to apply a lever to; start several such panics concurrently and you might conceivably be able to bring the whole JIT house of cards crashing down for weeks on end.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Monday September 27 2021, @01:23PM (7 children)
It does provide an object lesson into how quickly authority breaks down when boneheaded decisions disrupt the status quo. At the moment it's fuel shortages, and before, it was toilet paper. But as the article mentioned, it's starting to become food and other things. If the elites don't press for a return to the normalcy that they depend upon to coast, then it's quite possible that disruptions form a positive feedback loop.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @03:13PM
So how do you suppose Brexit will be reversed? Right....
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @04:49PM (5 children)
But when people discuss such positive feedback loops regarding the climate you tend to downplay such worries. The economy is important, but you older lot treat it more like a religion with TeH MarKeT.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Monday September 27 2021, @09:37PM (4 children)
I tend to? It's flattering that you follow my posts on Soylent with such interest. But it also means you misread my take on climate change; it's happening, and has happened before, but it is not the end of the world. Life will adapt, and humanity will probably also adapt. Some things will be lost, and other things will be gained. We might find ourselves living in cities and taking sea kayaking trips over the ruins of NYC just offshore, the way we now can sail over the heads of those lost in Doggerland [wikipedia.org].
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @09:56PM (3 children)
And hundreds of millions will die because fossil fuel companies wanted to extract profit for just a bit longer, but no big deal.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday September 28 2021, @02:35AM (2 children)
Or hundreds of millions finally annex Canada and put an end to Tim Horton's running amok once and for all. People are not trees, and can move.
We might lose Venice, but we'll also be rid of the Jersey Shore, and that, my friend, puts the world at least slightly in the black.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @02:17PM
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday September 29 2021, @11:24PM
Only as far as the first immigration barrier they run into.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday September 27 2021, @03:13PM (1 child)
It was easier to summarize in the States in 2020:
Trump / the media / scapegoat of your choosing: so full of $hit that we ran out of toilet paper.
The American public ( the true source of the problem ) has been repeating this behavior since the original Johnny Carson monologue gag about a tp shortage.
Clearly, the apple has not fallen far from the tree.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RS3 on Monday September 27 2021, @04:25PM
Absolutely, and it's all amplified / accelerated by social media- news and rumors spread exponentially farther and faster than ever before.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by quietus on Monday September 27 2021, @07:23PM
Robert Harris [wikipedia.org] wrote a novel (The Second Sleep, published in 2019) about what would happen when there was suddenly a breakdown in communication [networks] in a modern society. The book starts with the quote that London is always only 4 days away from famine i.e. by that time the warehouse supplies have run out.
Eerily, the scenario under which communication breaks down in his book is an aggressive virus which overstresses the medical infrastructure and, finally, the supply infrastructure.
(Score: 3, Funny) by bzipitidoo on Monday September 27 2021, @07:51PM
Let them
eat cakedrive an electric car?(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Tuesday September 28 2021, @09:33AM
seems a little odd that this would be the first part of the supply chain to break down
Until you realise how much training is required to drive a 40 ton tanker through filling stations and
discharge your cargo without destroying any of them at all. Which you have to pay for before you
can get the job. And it is dangerous and physically hard work. And how little pay "the highest paid
sector of the industry" gets.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @02:07PM (3 children)
Isn't this just because of the Federal unemployment checks? I thought that was the reason for all of the labor shortages. Don't tell me I've been lied to by my favorite propaganda network!
(Score: 4, Touché) by kazzie on Monday September 27 2021, @06:36PM
There are few federal checks on how many people in the UK are unemployed, and even fewer receive cheques from the federal government.
(Score: 2) by Revek on Monday September 27 2021, @09:09PM (1 child)
The checks made people realize how little they were earning and gave them a taste of a living wage for the first time in their life. Suddenly no one wants those jobs and greedy business owners who could easily pay them a real wage with a very small increase in cost still think that money is still theirs.
This page was generated by a Swarm of Roaming Elephants
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @12:32AM
If you think that's a living wage then you're still living with your parents.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Monday September 27 2021, @01:29PM (10 children)
I've read a couple of comments by Brits, who pointed out that this is just panic buying. A couple of stations didn't have fuel. Somebody posted to social media. Word went out that *all* stations were short, so people all ran to fill up their cars. If you figure, on average, a car is half-full - and now they are all full - that's a lot of extra fuel that's just been pumped out of the stations. So now many of them really are out.
It's the same damned thing as with toilet paper. People didn't poop more, but if everybody suddenly buys a month's worth up front, the shelves will be empty. Eventually, the supply chain catches up. In the case of petrol, since the actual size of gas tanks limits the panic buying, this probably won't take more than a week or two...
People are like lemmings, sometimes, only lemmings may be smarter.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @01:37PM
You kidding? What do you people eat to experience diarrhea for months on end and consider it normal?
I don't take pleasure in oversharing, but I barely get to need one roll of TP every 10-14 days or so.
(Score: 4, Funny) by c0lo on Monday September 27 2021, @01:40PM (3 children)
Oh yeah, the Brits can't buy thick plastic bags [twimg.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday September 27 2021, @03:17PM (2 children)
I just about lost it when I saw people hoarding gasoline in 2liter soda bottles during a hurricane evacuation.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Tork on Monday September 27 2021, @04:05PM (1 child)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Monday September 27 2021, @06:14PM
On a galactic scale, global climate change is a form of social Darwinism too...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Opportunist on Monday September 27 2021, @02:38PM (1 child)
It's part of our JIT half-full planning. The general idea is that you only need enough fuel to fill half the tanks with gas. Because that's what happens on average. If EVERYONE suddenly comes and wants to fill up, the system fails because nobody has the money to tie down in a few thousand liters of gas per station.
You have the same phenomenon with every commodity. If suddenly everyone gets up and demands to purchase what they'd otherwise purchase somewhere within the next 30 days today instead, you'll see thing fall apart.
If you want to have a lot of fun, start a rumor that a certain bank is unable to pay all their customers' money back. Because then they won't be.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @09:16AM
Which is what happened to Dutch DSB Bank [wikipedia.org] a decade ago. The rumour was deliberately started by the victims of their mortgage practices, in order to force an outside solution for their overpriced mortgages.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Monday September 27 2021, @09:32PM (1 child)
It _is_ just panic buying, and it isn't every petrol station, yet (refilled car tonight as running empty, but first two places I tried were completely out).
Allegedly wasn't helped by a Remainer who was at a high level meeting where they decided this is what would happen if there was panic buying, who then decided to make it happen by yelling "panic buy petrol, because Brexit", so it could then be blamed on Brexit...
But filling the tank isn't the limit for everyone, there are folks out with large jerry cans (obviously it's grass cutting season and the lawnmowers need filling - yeah right), and the news says there are some idiots filling plastic bottles (yeah, let me know how that one goes, from a distance).
Oh, and on the TP thing, I can mostly agree with "people didn't poop more", but we are talking start of lockdown when suddenly loads of people (kids and adults) were at home an awful lot more than usual, so they might well have pooped a lot more _at_ _home_ (I mean if you got a choice do you poop on your own time or company time...). Also a lot of less-domestically-capable people suddenly found they had to cook their own food, it's reasonably likely some of them ended up pooping a lot more as a result...
But mostly it was indeed just panic buying. At a deeper level though it is a symptom of a systemic problem with free-market-capitalism taken to logical limits - stock costs money, so do everything JIT. While everything runs smoothly, it is all optimally efficient. For the individual as well as the corp - who needs a store cupboard when you can go to the supermarket each day on way back from work and buy just what you want. But when any little thing goes wrong, the whole house of cards comes down because there is no resilience in the system, because that costs money which means less profits...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @02:23AM
Pshaw, you amateurs. [wtop.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @09:47PM
The underlying problem is a shortage of truck drivers, a problem that also exists in the US and EU. The UK licensing agency went on strike earlier in the the year [nation.cymru] and amassed a backlog of around 40,000 Heavy Goods Vehicle license applications. Truck driving was once a job people did to earn good money and support a family. Now it's a high churn industry because pay hasn't increased in decades with companies preferring to exploit immigrant labor. The market solution would simply be to increase wages for drivers, perhaps these companies should deduct these increases from the assholes in management that created the situation.
(Score: 5, Funny) by EJ on Monday September 27 2021, @02:22PM (2 children)
I'm glad we don't have to worry about running out of petrol here. We use gasoline.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Monday September 27 2021, @03:20PM (1 child)
In Soviet Russia, we are so unfortunate that our cars must run on kerosene. Only the elites can have the foreign gasoline and diesel cars. It is unfortunate because when the cold winter comes, the gasoline and diesel gels yet the kerosene engine still works. So the poor have to go to work while the elites stay at home. We say since you don't come, we have to do your work, so you must pay us more. They tell us, no, you will be paid the same because you're doing the same amount of work. Since he's right we don't argue any more, because nobody is doing any work.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @02:25PM
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @03:21PM (23 children)
One of the things that slow down economies is the huge burdensome requirement for every single position, with slight variations, to have separate occupational licensing.
For instance to be a truck driver you need to have a license. To drive 'hazardous material' (at least here in California) requires a separate license as well. So whenever there is a shortage of something and perhaps a surplus of something similar one of the reasons they can't just fill in the void with anyone with similar, relatively transferable, qualifications is all the separate lines of occupational licensing. People can't simply move back and forth across similar fields as demand sees fit because of all the burdensome, expensive, and time consuming licensing requirements that keeps them all separate. This imposes risk, by the time one acquires a license who knows if such a field will still be in demand and the time (and cost) required to acquire such a license takes away from time you could be working and making money. People don't want to risk not working in order to get a license to do something only to find out that the demand has changed by the time they got that license and now they can't find good work after they went through all that trouble to acquire a new license.
Another example is nursing and doctors. You become a nurse you can't just work your way up to a doctor. You can get a Ph.D. in nursing and you are still stuck as a nurse. Someone with an education in nursing and plenty of experience as a nurse should have a good amount of transferable credits to become a doctor without having to basically start all over (or, in some situations, schools won't let you even become both at the same time to help make the transition smooth and cheap. It's like they deliberately keep you at your originally chosen occupation).
Back in the days you can start out as the janitor in a company and work your way up to an engineer (ie: my dad practically started out as a janitor at a well known company that builds military aircraft and he ended up building airplanes/fighter jets. The company offered to keep him as well and educate him with their own private school so he can be an engineer but he quit to run his business). Now a days that's impossible, the janitor doesn't even work for the company because they are contracted and separate from the company. You are basically stuck in the class you started out with and can't really work your way up to anything outside of that class no matter how hard you work.
What people don't understand is that socialism is elitism (and capitalism is egalitarian).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @03:33PM
All of these occupational licensing requirements basically create a class structure (partly because it's too expensive and burdensome to maintain too many licenses at once to transition from one field to another as demand sees fit or to keep switching licensing. You are stuck in a given class).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @04:37PM
A recent video that goes into some of the licensing difficulties
NYC throws away food from unlicensed street vendor; let's dig into it
48K views · 22 hours ago
Louis Rossmann
https://youtu.be/MrB0B2QZ8LU [youtu.be]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Ox0000 on Monday September 27 2021, @05:50PM (18 children)
What you fail to realize is that these 'burdensome requirements' are typically created due to someone else doing something dumb. A structured society reacts to that by saying "right, you can't do the dumb thing anymore because the damage/cost is too great".
- Truck Drivers need a license because you need to demonstrate proficiency in driving a truck. That's not the same as driving a car. Also, I don't want a 16yo kid to hop into a truck and start driving that without ever haven driven anything.
- To transport 'hazardous material', you need a license to ... lo and behold... have demonstrated that you know how to deal with that substance safely. Because when you're statically charged and you stick your head in your big vat with gasoline vapor, you may take out yourself (I'm cool with that) as well as the entire block you're on (I'm not cool with that, do that shit somewhere else). That requirement is there to make sure you've been taught that and that you have internalized it.
I could go on... my point is that these regulations are (typically) there for a very good reason: bad stuff happened before, we don't like the bad stuff, let's make it so that it is as hard as possible for you to do the bad stuff.
Some folks hear "requirement" or "regulation" and think that all of those things are literally, solely created by some faceless bureaucrat who only thinks one thought: "what can I do to piss of some folks/business today?" That thinking is just plain incorrect and shows a lack of understanding of the world, as well (typically) as a lack of sympathy for your fellow human beings. Don't get me wrong though, I'm not saying that all regulations are justified, I _am_ saying that _most_ regulation is in place because of what I mention above.
Socialism, by definition (go on, go read the definition), is not elitism. You're thinking of totalitarian communism.
However, by definition, capitalism is 'elitarian'. In capitalism, you make money using money. That's what capitalism is. If you have money, you can make more of it, if you have no money, you cannot enter the game at all. If that is not elitism, then you and I have a very different definition of that term.
Yeah, and look what good that did to Boeing... (sorry, I couldn't resist the joke)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @07:49PM (7 children)
The Boeing of now ...
Bad things happen with or without these regulations. Doesn't mean these regulations need to be so expensive and burdensome. Many of them exist to make money for licensing bureaus also. Follow the money.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Ox0000 on Monday September 27 2021, @09:08PM (6 children)
Can you be specific? The regulation about being licensed to drive, or the one about being knowledgeable about how to transport hazardous materials? Maybe it's the one about how many people are allowed in a particular space by your fire marshal? Or is it perchance the one about how to safely handle uncooked foods if you choose to serve it to customers? Oh oh oh... I know.. it's that one about not having your establishment be a firetrap and provide fire extinguishers... Or wait, no... it's the one about making sure your electrician is not going to burn your house down with his unlicensed/unregulated 'handy work' the first time you flip that switch?
I'm sorry if I come across snarky, but that's because I am...
Bad things most certainly happen without those regulations. Some bad things still happen with those regulations in place (typically when they are violated). I'd argue that less badness is 'gooder' than more badness.
If you want to toss out the "follow the money" strawman, then please, lead me along, show me your actual, quantified research result versus your gut feeling of being wronged. Take me on that path to the money! Please, do! Do lead me to that money... Don't put that burden on me, be a leader, don't be lazy and do the work. Until you do so, your argument is dismissed!
I'm not saying regulations are fun, but I am saying that regulations are necessary. And it's specifically because of the folks claiming that they aren't necessary, that they are. Because it's those folks that are the ones who will be cutting corners.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @09:18PM (4 children)
Pick a license in a given state. Look up the renewal fee. Look up how many people are licensed. Do some arithmetic. That would give you an estimate of how much is collected per year just on renewals for that one license in the state. Follow the money.
(Score: 2) by Ox0000 on Monday September 27 2021, @09:26PM (3 children)
You're repeating yourself.
But go on then, do the arithmetic...show me how wrong I am. Where does that money go to? Please, be as detailed as you can...
You _imply_ it goes to some 'shady cabal of people who do not earn that money'. Demonstrate your argument!
You also seem to equate "regulation" with "license" which is only one very small sliver of the regulations debate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @09:39PM (2 children)
It goes to someone interested in collecting fees no matter how otherwise unnecessary those fees are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @10:08PM (1 child)
A smart man bases his political beliefs on his thoughts
A wise man changes them depending on who they are trolling
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27 2021, @10:46PM
A wise politician changes them based on who he needs to please in the moment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @06:15AM
"If you want to toss out the "follow the money" strawman, then please, lead me along, show me your actual, quantified research result versus your gut feeling of being wronged."
If the government wants to impose a law on me it is their responsibility to justify their reasoning. They should be the ones to provide the quantifiable results and research in an easy to find manner. If you can't easily find such information then our government has failed their responsibilities. They should tell me how much this is costing.
"Take me on that path to the money! Please, do! Do lead me to that money... Don't put that burden on me, be a leader, don't be lazy and do the work. Until you do so, your argument is dismissed!"
If the government wants to impose a law it is always their burden to justify said law. It is never my burden to justify the absence of a law.
"bad stuff happened before, we don't like the bad stuff"
This is true with or without licensing.
"let's make it so that it is as hard as possible for you to do the bad stuff."
Let's lock everyone in jail until they are licensed to ... walk? Don't let them use a butter knife because bad stuff happens. How far do you take it?
Aside from your snarky response (and my snarky response to your snarky response) I will respond to some of your other comments.
"Don't get me wrong though, I'm not saying that all regulations are justified, I _am_ saying that _most_ regulation is in place because of what I mention above."
I'm not saying that all of the licensing is unjustified either. I think much the safety licensing is justified. I was also mentioning truck driving and hazardous material licenses as a general example as it might relate to the original thread but I'm not necessarily against these licenses specifically (I mostly agree with them). I'm sure there are other related licenses. The problem is that they often create too many separate licenses for similar lines of work which can make it difficult to transition or perhaps integrate various lines of work. Also some licenses can be pretty expensive to obtain (ie: years of schooling, etc...). How much of that expense is intended to generate revenue to the recipients of those expenses?
While I do think that much of the licensing is justified I also think that much of it is intended to generate revenue through various fees and schooling. I'm just saying it's something we should look at and consider in general, not that I (or you) have all the answers in each specific case.
"I am saying that regulations are necessary. And it's specifically because of the folks claiming that they aren't necessary, that they are. Because it's those folks that are the ones who will be cutting corners."
No one is saying they aren't necessary. I don't think that and I think that's a strawman (interesting how you somehow think my follow the money quote is a strawman yet you somehow manage to make a real strawman argument. You don't seem to know what a strawman is). I just think that sometimes they can be overbearing and over costing and in many situations the real reason they exist could be to generate revenue for licensing bureaus and educational/trade institutes. These licenses can be expensive and that's something we should consider.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @12:22AM
Do not shift the blame.
Bureaucrats killed the USSR to become petty feudal lords on the ruins. Now the West is undergoing the same transformation.
(Score: 5, Touché) by http on Tuesday September 28 2021, @12:43AM
Ten four, good buddy,
Every so-called "bureaucratic" occupational safety regulation is written in blood, with the coroners' first drafts in formaldehyde.
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @06:27AM (7 children)
"Socialism, by definition (go on, go read the definition), is not elitism. You're thinking of totalitarian communism.
However, by definition, capitalism is 'elitarian'. In capitalism, you make money using money. That's what capitalism is. If you have money, you can make more of it, if you have no money, you cannot enter the game at all. If that is not elitism, then you and I have a very different definition of that term."
Well, capitalism is actually a derogatory term. The correct term is free markets but capitalism stuck. Regardless, if you have in demand hard to obtain skills in capitalism you can charge good money for those skills and you, too, can move up. That's egalitarian.
Most socialist countries are elitist. So to equate socialism to elitism doesn't mean I'm defining the two as being equal just that I'm pointing out that one tends to lead to the other. With socialism you typically have the elitist government and the general proletariat.
If you have valuable skills the government taxes you if you try to make too much money with those skills to the point of limiting how much you can make. That money often goes to government corruption and back door dealings (ie: a politician that will grant you such and such government money if you hire such and such relative of the politician, etc...).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @06:37AM (5 children)
Also, with all these licensing requirements, you need capital (money) to obtain licensing/education.
With capitalism all of these capital expensive artificial barriers to entry don't exist.
It's funny how you talk about making money using money. You use money to get licensed to make money. You use money to keep renewing the licenses to make money. The government is artificially requiring you to use money to make money. In capitalism you aren't artificially required to use money to make money.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @06:45AM (4 children)
(also, a lot of people go in debt to obtain education/licensing and whatnot. That's not capitalism. It's socialism and big government that creates the need to use money to make money and makes it hard for those without money to begin with to move up. The artificially expensive barriers to entry are exactly why we need to carefully look at licensing requirements).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @12:31PM (3 children)
Also let's also mention laws like
The pattern day trading rule
Laws that don't let you use Peerstreet unless you have an arbitrary amount of money or capital first
Laws that require you to pay auto insurance unless you have so much money you can put up for bond (you need to use money to make the money you can make driving to work or driving as an occupation). The need to pay auto insurance or hold so much money in a bond requires you to need money to make money.
Laws that require you to have like 100 million dollars in assets to be a qualified institutional investor of certain things if you want to invest in these certain things (laws that require you to need money to make money and lock others out of certain investments).
Laws that require you to have so much in assets if you want to be an insurance company, a bank, or a lender (not that I disagree with these laws).
Minimum wage laws that require employers to have so much money to hire employees.
Taxi-cab medallion laws that require you to buy a taxicab medallion (that used to go for like well over a million dollars, especially when adjusted for inflation, before ride share was around) just to either drive a taxicab or to be able to hire someone to drive a taxicab (these laws I disagree with). Again, another law that requires you to need money to make money. Then taxicab companies that hold these limited medallion licenses that put their workers under a 1099 want to try to shut down competing ride share companies and when that didn't work they want to force the competing companies to classify their workers as employees.
Patent law that requires you to pay a potentially expensive patent licensing fee just to make something (or to own a bunch of expensive to acquire patents to cross license with others).
FDA approval laws that require you to spend a ton of money on R&D and pay FDA fees to sell and market certain products (again, not that I disagree with these laws).
I'm not necessarily against all of these anti-capitalistic laws (many of which are licensing laws) that artificially require you to need money to make money but what I am saying is that we need to look at them carefully. Many of them may exist for the wrong reasons (to keep those without money out hence limiting competition and to collect revenue for various entities).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @12:42PM
Also, don't think that Jeff Bezos grandstands in favor of increasing the minimum wage for altruistic purposes. He wants to increase the minimum wage because he knows that his competitors, companies like Target and Wal-Mart, are more labor intensive than Amazon. So increasing the minimum wage will require his competitors to raise their prices which will drive more people to Amazon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @12:49PM (1 child)
(minimum wage and labor and labor insurance laws that require employers to have so much money to hire employees. Sure, you need money to hire employees regardless but all of these laws artificially increase how much money you need to hire employees).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @02:05PM
It is big government that artificially imposes a need for money to make money and that artificially increases how much money you need to make money. Not capitalism. Big government bureaucracy. Expensive to comply with rules and regulations that only the rich can afford to comply with that keep the poor out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @08:46PM
""Socialism, by definition (go on, go read the definition)"
Simply going off the dictionary definition is ignoring the true nature of socialism/elitism in favor of playing semantics. It's way over simplistic and what I would expect from a grade school student.
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Monday September 27 2021, @08:06PM (1 child)
I believe they are what's called nurse practitioners here in the US. More and more I end up seeing an NP rather than an MD for medical checkups/issues. I wonder if they are billing my insurance as if an MD took the time to see me?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @06:12AM
Conversely, your insurance company is only paying NP rates for your checkup.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Monday September 27 2021, @04:33PM
Like Americans do. As God intended.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday September 28 2021, @12:54AM (2 children)
British army on standby to help with petrol shortages amid panic buying at servos [abc.net.au]
That's, you know, like "militarizing the public support during a lockdown".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @01:16AM (1 child)
The Army do logistics and many soldiers used to get the licenses because trade courses are subsidized and when they left, driving jobs paid well. Now driving jobs basically pay minimum wage so this is probably just the logistics corp as Squaddies do subsidized electrical and gas fitting courses instead.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday September 28 2021, @03:10AM
Yeah, nahhh, mate... I was poking another A/C who was equating the involvement of Australian defence in social support during a lockdown with the Army enforcing a brutal home detention at gun point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford